Dorin Schumacher masterfully employs creative nonfiction to explore silent-film-pioneer Helen Gardner’s voice and role in Vanity Fair, the first film adaptation of the novel. Schumacher’s recreation of her famous grandmother, the first actor to produce and star in a feature length film in the United States, illuminates the vanguard actor’s pivotal role in early American film. VANITY FAIR (1911) with Helen Gardner as Becky Sharp adds to the growing body of experimental and hybrid literature with its use of Gardner’s real letters, film reviews, and the original Vanity Fair print. Schumacher’s persona of Gardner’s screen presence follows the actor’s history through act-by-act sequences of the film. Schumacher, a Ph.D. in French literature, teacher, scholar and writer, searched worldwide for her absent grandmother’s traces buried in the suppression of women’s contributions to cinema, now shines a spotlight on Gardner’s brilliant movie creations.“Dorin Schumacher’s VANITY FAIR is a deeply researched and deeply moving account of unsung film pioneer Helen Gardner embodying Becky Sharp in Vitagraph’s ambitious 1911 screen adaptation. This book delves us into Gardner’s artistic consciousness, allowing us to hear this extraordinary cinematic storyteller speak between the intertitles in her own voice, as gleaned from copious primary documents.” — Jacqueline Stewart, Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago and Host, “Silent Sunday Nights” on Turner Classic Movies Michael Shields is the Editor in Chief of the online Arts & Culture magazine and of its associated publishing imprint, ATM Publishing. He hosts Across The Margin: The Podcast while producing/editing three other podcast for the Osiris Media Group, of which Across The Margin is a charter member of.